Topics in Category: Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfers - SuSanA Forumhttps://forum.susana.org
Tue, 22 Jan 2019 01:01:19 +0100Joomla! - Open Source Content Management/media/kunena/images/icons/rss.pngTopics in Category: Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfers - SuSanA Forumen-gbKey documents for the sub-category on financing - by: muenchhttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/13212-key-documents-for-the-sub-category-on-financing#13347
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/13212-key-documents-for-the-sub-category-on-financing#13347
Thanks a lot for your feedback.
The second publication that you mentioned was already in my list (item 4).
If I add the one from Sijbesma, which other one should I remove (to keep the list at five documents)? Perhaps the one from 2009 (item 5) which is perhaps not so up to date anymore (although I like how it's laid out, short and crisp)?

Do you have any suggestions for a publication to include that gives good guidance on costing of a sanitation system?

The Programme officially launched June 4, 2018. The size of the grant is USD 14,500,000.

Purpose:

To significantly mobilise the financial resources and to develop a pipeline of investment projects that will support the African countries to meet the SDG targets in urban sanitation

Activities:

The project will promote the adaptation and much wider application of tested approaches as well as support fine-tuning developed business innovations leading to robust affordable and financially and environmentally sustainable sanitation services for urban inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the urban poor. The project will directly target 2 million urban dwellers and indirectly target another 6 million through the implementation of the prepared sub-projects. The project has 4 main components that are well aligned with the AWF 2017 – 2022 Strategy: (i) Establishment of an Africa Urban Sanitation Investment Fund (AUSIF) (ii) Investment Project Preparation: (iii) Catalytic Investments; and (iv) Investment Promotion.

Objectives:

The objectives are the following (i) Establishing the Africa Urban Sanitation Investment Fund (AUSIF) (ii) Develop a pipeline of Investment Projects: (iii) Promote Catalytic Investments that can attract additional funding from Private sector and other Partners and Governments; and (iv) Promoting Investment to mobilise more funding for the sector.

Regards]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersThu, 07 Jun 2018 18:14:09 +0200Research Call - Analysis of learning from the sanitation surcharge experience in Quelimane and Beira (Mozambique) - by: muenchhttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/21918-research-call-analysis-of-learning-from-the-sanitation-surcharge-experience-in-quelimane-and-beira-mozambique#24861
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/21918-research-call-analysis-of-learning-from-the-sanitation-surcharge-experience-in-quelimane-and-beira-mozambique#24861
Thanks for your detailed reply. I have moved this thread into our category on costs and financing now so that it's easier to find it again in future.

For those who don't know (this included myself until a few moments ago): WTP stands for Willingness to pay in Guy's post, not water treatment plant.
Wikipedia has this to say about Willingness to pay:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay
(article could be improved)

Oh and thanks for your words of praise about SuSanA - made my day!!

About that cost comparison work that you mentioned: I had a quick look at the IWA article that you linked to (
washdev.iwaponline.com/content/early/201.../22/washdev.2017.058
). I always find it hard to get my head around a methodology where people compare sewer systems with UDDTs. To me that makes no sense. The UDDT will always come out cheaper than the sewer system but it only does part of the job: it only deals with excreta whereas the sewer system deals with excreta plus greywater plus perhaps even wastewater from small industries. So how could this sensibly be compared?

I tried to find a solution for this in your paper and only found this which touches on this issue but does not really resolve it:

An option to undertake such analysis is to compare costs to the level of service provided by each sanitation system. A methodology to assess service level has for instance been designed by the IRC WASHCost initiative (Potter et al. 2010) and proposes a sanitation ladder comprising five levels of service (no service, limited, basic, improved and highly improved), based on four main criteria: accessibility, use, reliability and environmental protection. The authors suggest that a different ladder shall be assigned separately for excreta and urine management, for greywater, and for solid waste.

Loïc Daudey has probably addressed this in the paper elsewhere and I probably didn't grasp it fully yet.

Daudey’s review that conventional sewer systems are the most expensive solution, followed by a tie between ‘septic tank & FSM’ solutions and simplified sewerage, and finally various ‘pit & FSM’ solutions; seems pretty reasonable, if I were to look at it from my experience here.
There would be, however, some variations from one country to another, in the developing regions.
In developed countries, cost variations are expected to be significantly different.

What happens when there is no charge for sewerage system?
Answer: the residents will discharge wastewater indiscriminately.

In case of Bangkok:

“Wastewater has undermined the capital city's environmental reputation. Once dubbed as the Venice of the East, once clean canals in Bangkok have been inundated with wastewater discharged from households, factories and buildings. The BMA approved a policy to collect a treatment fee for wastewater in 2004, but the policy failed to materialise into a fee, as city officials did not follow through.”

In addition, it will be difficult for the service providers to meet their O&M (operation and maintenance) expenditure, if the residents do not pay for the services they are getting. The above link from Bangkok Post gives more interesting details.

I am hesitant to say that improving sanitation can be done in a way that all financial costs can be recovered. Yes, if a full social cost benefit analysis (SCBA)
www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2011/ch11.pdf
is done, you are likely to find that the benefits are greater than the costs. However, many of these benefits do not generate a flow of money to the company, government or utility that provides the sanitation service. For example, improving sanitation quite possibly leads to higher labor productivity as people take less sick days. However, this benefit does not accrue to those implementing the sanitation project. In economist speak, it is an externality
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
. To stay in economists-speak. If an economic analysis (including externalities and wider social benefits) is carried out, sanitation is profitable. However a financial analysis (as done by a firm that is interested in making a profit) is likely not to yield a positive result. (It could for parts of the sanitation chain, but I really doubt it will be for treatment and safe disposal/re-use).

In my view, the fact that many of the benefits of improved sanitation accrue to wider society is a strong argument to finance some of it with taxation or user fees. (With a cross subsidizing mechanism where the rich pay more than the poor.) Having said that, I don’t think governments should pay for toilets for everyone. (Semi) centralized treatment, where the population density requires it, is a logical candidate for government funding (both infrastructure investment and operation). Emptying and conveyance services (non-sewered) are somewhat of a grey area here, which a well regulated private sector can probably implement most efficiently.

Some time ago we had a forum discussion (based on a discussion paper Dorothee Spuhler and I wrote) about a way the market for sanitation services should probably look like in an “ideal” world.
forum.susana.org/167-market-development-...ments-wanted?setGT=0
. Though it would be good to improve and update the paper based on the forum feedback, I would still support a lot of the ideas about sanitation markets expressed in it. At any rate, it will provide some more background to my answers above.

Let’s keep this conversation going. I would also like to hear from others!

Regards

Marijn]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersWed, 07 Mar 2018 06:30:07 +0100Economic Valuation of Wastewater – The Cost of Action and the Cost of No Action - by: vissumohttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/16026-economic-valuation-of-wastewater-the-cost-of-action-and-the-cost-of-no-action#24053
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/16026-economic-valuation-of-wastewater-the-cost-of-action-and-the-cost-of-no-action#24053
Wastewater is a source of energy, fertilisers, water, bio-cement... so wastewater value can be higher than clean water.
We designed a market model to fund wastewater valorisation plants by commoditising treated wastewater
www.pranasustainablewater.ch/en/advantages/matching.php

Kind regards]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersMon, 12 Feb 2018 17:19:18 +0100Financial Innovation for the SDGs - to direct private finance towards critical sustainability solutions - by: JKMakowkahttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22190-financial-innovation-for-the-sdgs-to-direct-private-finance-towards-critical-sustainability-solutions#24028
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22190-financial-innovation-for-the-sdgs-to-direct-private-finance-towards-critical-sustainability-solutions#24028
In a way that is a clash of two different ideas within the same overall system, i.e. the idea that NGOs should work more like businesses (and thus be able to pre-finance their successful projects) while the same time strongly discouraging any kind of activity that could be seen as "making a profit" off public money.

As a side point, the often mentioned financial resources that larger NGOs have (and that could in theory serve for pre-financing projects) are usually either tied to their humanitarian efforts (and act as an emergency reserve of sorts) or as in the case of for example Red Cross Societies are typically linked to their domestic efforts such as blood banking or running hospitals, and are thus not really available for "risky" investments abroad.

I actually see this ICRC pilot as interesting from another perspective however: I believe originally results-based financing wasn't really "invented" for NGOs, but rather within ODA to replace direct budget support to poor countries' governments. However this never really took off as these governments usually strongly disliked what appeared to them as a colonial like external evaluation system. However these same governments usually don't shy away from borrowing money from "neutral" financial markets (if they get the chance), and thus a scheme like described for ICRC could work well in the sense that financial investors could approach a government with a good loan offer that promises reduced liability in case the funded projects qualify for a results-based financing scheme of a third party.]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersSun, 11 Feb 2018 09:00:28 +0100Futures markets to finance sanitations infrastructures - by: vissumohttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22172-futures-markets-to-finance-sanitations-infrastructures#23942
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22172-futures-markets-to-finance-sanitations-infrastructures#23942Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersFri, 02 Feb 2018 14:56:35 +0100Summary: The relevance of a cheap motorbike for Sanitation - by: vposthttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22000-summary-the-relevance-of-a-cheap-motorbike-for-sanitation#23402
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/22000-summary-the-relevance-of-a-cheap-motorbike-for-sanitation#23402
Thanks for your response. It is the ease of comparison that matters most both inside and between outside countries. Specific circumstances as indicated by you may thus be taken into account. We tried to address this in the full paper that is also in the SuSanA library:
www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource...library/details/2895
.
I am also attaching it to this post.

This attachment is hidden for guests.Please log in or register to see it.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) seems to be somewhat common in both developed and developing for development projects including the sanitation projects. There is always a question mark on PPP, in terms of transparency.

World Bank is the major promoter of PPP. In Pakistan too, PPP is catching on.

This is a key point; the post says: “Negotiations are subject to commercial confidentiality, making it hard for parliamentarians, let alone civil society, to scrutinize them. This lack of transparency significantly increases the likelihood of corruption and undermines democratic accountability.”

If the projects can be managed within the finances available in public sector, then perhaps there is no need for PPP. Sanitation projects in the rural areas of developing countries are not quite large, in terms of capital costs. They can be safely managed by the local government departments, without having to resort to PPP.

F H Mughal]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersTue, 05 Dec 2017 17:13:53 +0100IRC and Water.org paper: "Financing WASH: how to increase funds for the sector while reducing inequities" - by: Lesleyhttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/21474-irc-and-water-org-paper-financing-wash-how-to-increase-funds-for-the-sector-while-reducing-inequities#21781
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/21474-irc-and-water-org-paper-financing-wash-how-to-increase-funds-for-the-sector-while-reducing-inequities#21781
1. The need for finance for strengthening the enabling environment
2. The untapped use of micro and blended finance
3. The current inequities in allocation of finance in the sector

Water.org has collaborated with the Netherlands-based IRC to highlight these issues so they can be more easily considered and integrated into existing national plans.]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersTue, 13 Jun 2017 00:33:50 +0200Bi/Multilateral funding for sanitation services? - To NGOs or the private sector directly for sanitation services - by: muenchhttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/20338-bi-multilateral-funding-for-sanitation-services-to-ngos-or-the-private-sector-directly-for-sanitation-services#21202
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/20338-bi-multilateral-funding-for-sanitation-services-to-ngos-or-the-private-sector-directly-for-sanitation-services#21202
I am not sure. The definition of multilateral is governments working together so perhaps as per the defnition there is no multilateral funding to NGOs and the private sector (see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateralism
)?

But maybe the funding is indirect because for implementation, the funds may then be channeled further to NGOs and to the private sector?

Have you or others got more information on this?
Why do you ask?

Regards,
Elisabeth]]>Financing: taxes, tariffs, transfersWed, 12 Apr 2017 13:26:46 +0200Economic benefits from household-level access to WaSH (data from India) - by: Lesleyhttps://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/18487-economic-benefits-from-household-level-access-to-wash-data-from-india#18487
https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/164-financing-taxes-tariffs-transfers/18487-economic-benefits-from-household-level-access-to-wash-data-from-india#18487
Many of us active on this forum understand that access to water and sanitation can have significant effects on household incomes: medical expenses can reduced by sustained good health, and productive time can be increased due to less sick days and less time required for water allocation as well as defecation.
My paper
, expanding upon the presentation I gave at last year's World Water Week in Stockholm, looks more closely at this topic and seeks to ignite deeper conversation and more data collection around these economic factors. Please read, share, and reply!

Best,
Lesley

+++++++++
Added by moderator:

Income-enabling, Not Consumptive: Association of Household Socio-economic Conditions with Safe Water and Sanitation

Abstract:

Water.org's programme, WaterCredit, uses microfinance to empower the world's poor to access water and sanitation. A major obstacle to scaling up this approach is the general assumption that loans for water and sanitation are too risky because they are consumptive rather than income-generating. This article challenges that argument by highlighting the financial gains people are able to derive to some extent from having water and/or sanitation infrastructure at home. Data that examine the economic implications of the reallocation of time formerly dedicated to water collection and defecation practices are provided from surveys and interviews conducted with WaterCredit borrowers in India.